Fantasy Movie League observations from an obsessed nerd

April 13, 2016April 13, 2016

Fantasy Movie League Spring Season Week 7 Picks

While in the middle of my “Hardcore Henry” hangover, I received some very interesting data on Perfect Cinema cost from community member JB this week. He collected data on the cost of Perfect Cinema going back to Week 1 of the inaugural Summer season. For example, this past week the Perfect Cinema used all $1000 FB exactly, but that isn’t the case for every week. With the data he collected, JB generated this cool graph:

There have been 26 different costs for the 47 different Perfect Cinemas, with $1000 being far the most common cost a total of 11 times. What is interesting about the graph, though, is how wide the variety is in the costs, going all the way down to $568 when 8x “War Room” took the top prize late in the Summer season. It also skips wide swaths of costs, with none with the $600s.

This tells us that Perfect Cinemas come in all sizes. While there is a tendency for it to come in with at least $990 of your spend, it does happen at other levels of cost so don’t be afraid to experiment with a wider set of combinations. Thanks and much Fantasy Movie Love to JB for working on this and if you have your own idea you’d like to see here I’m happy to take suggestions.

Week 7 Summary Table

Here is the summary table that I use to assess the results of my model (full table):

The PBO and SBD columns come from the ProBoxOffice.com and ShowBuzzDaily forecasts this week, which are then averaged. The Value column divides the Average by the FB$. The Use column applies the average of the Value column to non-forecasted films based on their FB$ and is the full list of what I use in my model. The PPP Showtimes column is data, courtesy the kind folks at Gracenote who let me use their showtimes API, from the Phil’s Phun Phlicks Chatter post on showtimes in his metro area (Louisville, KY). Week of Release shows how many weeks a film has been in theaters, the key number there being that beyond week 5, movies get difficult to forecast.

All that yields Best Performer candidates as “The Jungle Book”, “God’s Not Dead 2”, “Eye in the Sky”, and “Zootopia”.

Week 7 Perfect Combo Probabilities

Not only is “The Jungle Book” the top choice for Best Performer, the other choices are all priced low enough that in only the case where you think “Barbershop” overperforms does the math make sense to lead your lineup with anything else. The question then becomes what else you should fill your lineup with to maximize your chances at finding the Best Performer and its $2M per screen bonus.

If f you simply average ShowBuzzDaily and ProBoxOffice forecasts, the second item in the table above that utilizes “Jungle Book”, “Zootopia”, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2”, and 5x “God’s Not Dead 2” comes up as the best play. My model, which takes into account different variance scenarios, likes “Jungle Book”, “Zootopia”, and 6x “God’s Not Dead 2” although it has a lower ceiling, floor, and average. Alternatively, if you were a big believer in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2”, the third item in the table that utilizes it 6 times might be for you.

I’ll play the model’s choice from my “model only” account but I’m leaning towards that “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2” selection on my main account. I’m nervous about “God’s Not Dead 2” severely underperforming in daily performance compared to its predecessor and a slight up tick for “Greek Wedding” or even if you throw out the ShowBuzzDaily forecast for it, it enters the Best Performer conversation.